Computational psychiatry

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Computational psychiatry is a fairly new field that

…seeks to characterize mental dysfunction in terms of aberrant computations over multiple scales….

….Aberrant decision-making is central to the majority of psychiatric conditions and this provides a unique opportunity for progress. It is the computational revolution in cognitive neuroscience that underpins this opportunity and argues strongly for the application of computational approaches to psychiatry. This is the basis of computational psychiatry. (source)

One important computation that I believe is missing from our current understanding of human cognition is the high rate of interpersonal communication error.

Interpersonal communication error is especially significant psychologically because so much of human psychology is based on and grows out of interpersonal communication.

If we are making a lot of mistakes when we communicate with friends, family, spouses, and so forth, it follows that our psychological make-up will be burdened with errors that contribute to mental illness and poor functionality overall.

My considered opinion is that most people make several serious mistakes in speaking or listening every hour.

In normal interpersonal conversation, most people  mishear, misspeak, misinterpret, or misunderstand several times per hour.

These mistakes can be very serious. Often they snowball to produce strong emotional reactions that have no basis in fact.

The day will surely come when we will have technology that measures mistakes in communication. Before then, we have to use special techniques to find and correct communication mistakes.

Firstly, we have to recognize that such mistakes are common. Secondly, we have to understand that even a single small mistake can cause big problems. Thirdly, we need a technique to find and correct our mistakes.

FIML is the technique we have available today. FIML is based on the idea that communication mistakes are common, serious, and have very significant psychological ramifications.

Over time, FIML practice completely changes the way we view communication, self, and other.

FBI officials say J6 pipe bomb case cracked after it languished under Biden admin

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Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel announced on Thursday the arrest of a suspect in the Jan. 6 pipe bomb case after it languished for years under the Biden administration, crediting a fresh look at the case and a new team for the breakthrough.  

“Today’s arrests happened because the Trump administration made it a priority,” Bondi said at a press conference. “The cold case languished for years, until Director Patel and Deputy Director Bongino came to the FBI.” 

She said that no new evidence was uncovered, but that a fresh review of the case spearheaded by Bongino breathed new life into the case.

The suspect, who was named as Brian Cole Jr., will be charged with the use of explosive devices.

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Ukraine PEACE efforts are constantly sabotaged by Ukraine’s pro-war faction – elites tied to Zelensky and the European military-industrial complex – who dominate media under wartime censorship — Artem Dmytruk, Member of the Ukrainian Parliament

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‘These elites disguise their desire to prolong the war – where the poor die and the rich profit – as the “will of the people.” In reality, this is a massive disinformation campaign. Over 70% of Ukrainians support immediate peace, but their voices are suppressed by Zelensky’s regime through torture, extrajudicial persecution, and prison sentences on fabricated treason charges.’ — Artem Dmytruk

link for full text and video

‘We had a good run for our money with this GAS-CHAMBER-STORY we have been putting about, but don’t we run the risk that eventually we are going to be found out’ — Lord Victor Cavendish-Bentinck

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link

  • The post cites a 1943 British intelligence memo by Victor Cavendish-Bentinck, chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, doubting early reports of Nazi gas chambers as exaggerated propaganda that risked credibility if disproven, reflecting wartime caution seen in declassified documents from the Irving libel trial.
  • It references the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, which restricted U.S. government propaganda domestically until its 2012 modernization allowed broader dissemination, framing this as enabling modern deceptions like COVID-19 vaccine safety claims without legal repercussions.
  • Posted by Mads Palsvig, a former investment banker and Danish political party chairman, the content builds on his prior claims of Holocaust fabrications at sites like Dachau, advocating for Israeli apologies and reparations to Germans for post-1945 expulsions and deaths estimated at 500,000 to 2 million by historians.

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The text above is a decent Grok analysis of the photo and post and does not seemed biased. ABN

Autocatalytic systems

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An autocatalytic system is a system that can “catalyze its own production”. Autocatalytic systems are usually called “autocatalytic sets”, but for our purposes using the word system may make the concept clearer.

FIML is an autocatalytic system that allows partners to reestablish the terms of their relationship, their psychologies, and their comprehension of the world around them. Strictly speaking, FIML is a non-autonomous autocatalytic set because FIML uses an abundance of language and ideas that come from outside of itself.

FIML is a small set of precise behaviors that allow partners to communicate with great clarity and without interpersonal ambiguity. Interpersonal ambiguity is the cause of much suffering. FIML does not tell partners what to think or what to believe. It simply provides them with a set of tools that gives them the means to develop in ways that seem best to them.

FIML is primarily a communication technique, but the discoveries it leads to will cause partners to remake their understandings of who they are and how they understand themselves. Once partners have learned the system, they will find that it autocatalyzes, causing them to remake themselves with a freedom that had not been possible before.

FIML differs greatly from mainstream psychology because mainstream psychology is not autocatalytic. It is analytical, theoretical, or medical. The individual sufferer seeks a professional who diagnoses their “problem” based on a static standard and then prescribes medication or some kind of therapy that will also be provided by an expert. In contrast, FIML teaches partners how to communicate with sufficient clarity to comprehend themselves. As it autocatalyzes, FIML quite naturally leads partners to make beneficial changes in themselves as they discover new meanings in each other and the world around them.

I had been searching for a word like autocatalytic for some time. This morning I came across the following piece, which led to this post: The Single Theory That Could Explain Emergence, Organisation And The Origin of Life. The study on which that article is based can be found here: The Structure of Autocatalytic Sets: Evolvability, Enablement, and Emergence.

I am sure I have taken a few liberties with my application of this theory, but went ahead with these ideas anyway because one of the key features of FIML practice is it “auto-generates” or autocatalyzes itself. Once you get going and see how to do it, FIML practice almost runs by itself, allowing partners near infinite freedom to pursue whatever they want with it.

first posted  

The UK exodus: More Polish people are heading home than settling in Britain

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More than three times as many Poles are leaving the U.K. as are deciding to settle there, fresh data from the British Office for National Statistics (ONS) show.

According to a provisional bulletin published on November 27, the ONS estimates that 7,000 Polish citizens immigrated to the U.K. between mid-2024 and mid-2025.  

But as many as 25,000, or more than three times the number of Poles, chose to move in the opposite direction. 

Polish was the second most common EU nationality to emigrate from the U.K., topped only by Romanian. It was the fifth most common EU nationality to move to the U.K., topped by Romanian, Italian, Irish and French. 

Many Poles are also choosing to return home. Official figures estimate that 30,000 Poles return annually and 250,000–300,000 have done so since 2017, primarily for family reasons.  

“We leave for the money, but we return for the family,” Professor Izabela Grabowska, director of the CRASH Center for Research on Social Change and Human Mobility at Warsaw’s Kozminski University, said earlier in the year.  

In addition to family, a key driver for re-migration is Poland’s booming economy, including low unemployment and a narrowing income gap with Western nations.  

“People approaching retirement age or those considering entrepreneurship will be returning,” Professor Paweł Kaczmarczyk, director of the University of Warsaw’s Centre for Migration Research said. 

link

Multi Dimensional Yin Yang

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Multi Dimensional Yin Yang (MDYY) is a term I made up.

It can be used when two people are making a joint decision and discover that both of them care a lot about what the other one thinks or wants.

This kind of situation can arise between husbands and wives, good friends, or even business partners.

It’s good to have a term like this so that when weighing the factors going into a decision, this part of the weighing has a referent which both partners understand is intrinsically difficult to weigh rationally and to discuss.

MDYY is useful only when both partners care about each other and the decision they are making.

And both partners want to be honest and fair with each other and arrive at a good outcome.

In colloquial short-hand, the usefulness of MDYY arises when one partner says, my wanting to do this depends on how much you want to do it, and the other partner feels the same.

I have been using this term with my partner as we discuss a very consequential and complex decision we are making together.

Using this term allows us to set aside the MDYY aspect of our decision-making while talking about other factors that impinge on both the weighing of the decision and the final decision itself. ABN

Anyone claiming that Enoch Burke  hasn’t been sentenced to life for refusing to submit to gender ideology, but simply for ‘contempt of court’ is dishonest. Here’s why — Eva Vlaardingerbroek

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Anyone claiming that Enoch Burke  hasn’t been sentenced to life for refusing to submit to gender ideology, but simply for “contempt of court” is dishonest. Here’s why:

Technically speaking contempt of court is indeed the ground the High Court used to lock him up, but this whole case is about him being a Christian teacher refusing to forsake his beliefs by calling students  by the pronouns of a sex that they simply are not.

That was what he was fired for by the school. Wrongfully. And Mr. Burke’s refusal to accept the school’s decision and showing up to work anyway, makes him a hero with a backbone. It makes him someone who refuses to just stand by and let evil be done without putting up a fight. That’s why he keeps showing up and that’s why they are now locking him up till he stops doing that.

They want him to bow down, to submit to something he knows to be wrong. And they want the general public to be confused about what the legal grounds are for locking him up.

This shows you that just because something is “legally” justifiable, like the High Court’s decision to indefinitely imprison Burke, doesn’t meant that it’s right.

Burke should be freed this instance, and I hope the People of Ireland will fight for his cause.

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To my eye, this is judicial intellectual corruption or usurpation of powers they do not legally possess. USA has similar problems. It’s always a chore to apply laws well, and discussion is often warranted, but authoritarian rulings that bastardize the law harm society for that reason alone, to say nothing about the many other evil ramifications of a grossly unfair ruling like this. ABN

MAINE: Migrant agency with extensive ties to Maine Democrats appears to have defrauded MaineCare

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Here’s the summary:

  • Former employees allege Gateway Community Services systematically overbilled MaineCare (Medicaid) for services never provided, with falsified records and forged client signatures.
  • Despite prior audit findings that showed nearly $1M worth of erroneous billing by Gateway from 2015-2017, the Mills Administration continued awarding no-bid contracts to Gateway, totaling $3.3M since 2022, in addition to the continued flow of MaineCare money.
  • At the same time, Gateway leaders helped create the Community Organizing Alliance (COA) — a group dedicated to voter turnout in migrant communities aligned with Democratic Party goals.

Here’s the full story:

The migrant agency accused of running a five-year MaineCare fraud has extensive ties to Maine Democrats, ties that have proven mutually beneficial for Gateway Community Services and Gov. Janet Mills.

Gateway Community Services, founded in 2014 by Somali-American refugee Abdullahi Ali, came under fire last week thanks to whistleblower allegations reported exclusively by The Robinson Report that detailed an elaborate effort to overbill Medicaid, known in Maine as MaineCare.

At the same time the alleged fraud was happening, the Mills Administration handed lucrative contracts to Ali’s company and related nonprofit, while Ali and a former employee were creating the Community Organizing Alliance (COA) to boost voting for Democrats in migrant neighborhoods.

Those contracts flowed from the Mills Administration to Gateway Community Services despite a 2018 audit that found Gateway had previously overbilled MaineCare from 2015 to 2017 for close to $1 million…

link

This appears to be the same sort of scam which has plagued Minnesota, California and elsewhere. Taxpayer money is funneled into a bogus ‘non-profit care’ organization, which then pockets the money or uses it for purposes not authorized but that benefit the Democrats who funneled the money in the first place. ABN

Interoception, proprioception, and perception of dynamic mental states

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Interoception means our “perception or sense of internal body states,” including the states of our cardiovascular, digestive, respiratory, and thermoregulatory systems among others.

Proprioception means “one’s own” or “ones’ individual” (Latin proprius) “perception.” We normally use this word to refer to our physical position in the world—whether we are standing or sitting, how we are moving, and how much energy we are using.

Both interoception and proprioception generally refer to physical states of the body though, of course, how we interpret those states may involve much more than immediate physical considerations.

Erroneous interoception or the misinterpretation of internal states is is generally thought to be an important contributing factor to many psychological disorders, including anxiety, depression, panic disorder, and more.

Consider some other levels of interoception—our states of mind; our mental impressions of other people and of ourselves; our senses of our own psychologies.

These levels of psychological reality are normally accessed through introspection, meditation, mindfulness, and psychotherapy. All of these methods are good, but each of them lacks ongoing, real-time input from another human being, thus missing the dynamic functioning of the human mind in real-life situations.

FIML corrects this problem by providing objective, dynamic access to real-time psychological functioning. FIML is a method or tool for optimizing human psychology by honing our perceptions of our mental states as they actually function in real-world situations.